For the third year, we are helping organize the Robotics and Simulation developer room (ie. devroom) at Fosdem. This is a community effort together with people from the Eclipse Foundation, Ekumen, McGuire Robotics, Weekly Robotics and Honu Robotics, and I, Arnaud, am part of the organization committee. Tldr: last year’s full-day edition had a full room from morning to evening, we have a full day again this year, so propose a talk before November 23rd!
A look back at 2026
Fosdem is the biggest open source software conference in Europe. It is free to attend, no registration needed, and happens every year around the weekend between January and February in Brussels, Belgium. Next to the main tracks, most of the program happens in devrooms: small conferences of their own, where Fosdem provides the room and the video recording, and a team of volunteers runs the Call for Participation, reviews the proposals and makes sure everything runs smoothly on the day.
After a packed Sunday afternoon in 2025, 2026 was the first time we had a full-day room. The interest kept growing: the room was full all day long, with long queues of people waiting outside to get in. We had an awesome time and overall a great day.
If you missed it, or want to rewatch a talk, all the recordings are available from the individual talk pages of the 2026 schedule. They are also a good source of inspiration if you are thinking about submitting something this year.
Fosdem 2027: a full day of robots, again
We are thrilled to announce that we got a full-day room again this year, on Sunday, January 31, 2027. Next to the talks, there will be lightning talks and all talks are encouraged to bring a live demo: we all love robots in this room, so if you can bring yours and show it live, please do!
Propose a talk
If you, or anyone you know, has anything interesting to talk about and present, please have a look at the Call for Participation. The deadline for proposals is November 23rd, and the main requirement is that the talk covers an open source project. The scope is intentionally broad: from core robotics libraries and frameworks to simulation, tooling, autopilot firmware and open-source-friendly hardware platforms, and from foundational work to new AI-driven approaches. If in doubt, submit! See the CfP for all the details.
We look forward to reading your proposals, and to meeting you (and your robots) in Brussels!